


For our sins

by kameo_chan (orphan_account)



Series: For Want of a Nail [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Drama, Multi, Multiple Partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 23:02:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/kameo_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some secrets are too painful to keep and too terrible to expose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For our sins

**Author's Note:**

> Part two of the For Want of a Nail series, in which Anora learns that betrayal is sharper than any blade and cuts twice as deep.

Anora conceives shortly after her twenty-second summer. Part of her is overjoyed at the fact that finally, years' worth of rumours about her apparent infertility have been dealt the death-blow. But another part of her, a part that has grown and been kept hidden from prying eyes for some years now, is revolted. Cailan had had her many times over and had never once managed to plant a single seed within her belly, and yet she had spent only a few nights with Alistair and had conceived as readily as any country lass tumbled in a barn.

She thinks to herself that Alistair must truly be Maric's son, a bastard born and bred, and feels ill. And so to quell those thoughts, she focuses on the child growing inside of her. On the swell of her belly and the widening of her hips and the tenderness of her breasts. And Anora smiles to herself, because her child will be as much a Mac Tir as he will ever be a Theirin.

\----

Alistair proves himself a capable and caring husband and is by her side when Anora gives birth to their child, a full month late of her expected time. He holds her hand and does not flinch away from her screams and when everything is said and done not even the sternest of looks the midwife wracks him with are enough to send him from the room.

And when the babe is laid on her chest, Anora tries so very hard to keep her tears in check. But it is difficult with Alistair smiling foolishly at her and their child as though they are most wondrous things he has ever seen. He looks like Cailan, looks like her father and when the dam breaks and he gathers her in his arms, not all her tears are ones of happiness and relief.

\----

The first signs of trouble start when it comes to the naming of their son. "Scarce three weeks old and already strong enough to pull a finger off!" Alistair boasts and Eamon and Teagann laugh as the king gestures excitedly. Anora knows that Alistair wants to name their son Duncan, knows how much it would mean to him. But buried deep beneath the darkest layers of her conscience lies a pettiness that won't allow her to give him any leeway.

She will not have her child named for a man she hardly knew anything about, and it is this stubbornness that drive the first wedge between them.

"I will NEVER name my child for that murdering traitor!" Alistair roars at her when she proposes her own name for their son.

"Alistair, be reasonable," Eamon needles. "Before the Blight, Loghain was a man loved and respected by the people of Ferelden. He was a teyrn and-"

"Never," Alistair spits. "Never, and I don't care what he was! He killed the only family I had as well as the only one I knew. Never." And with that Alistair storms off to his own quarters. Eamon gives her a hopeless shrug.

"I am sorry, Your Highness. It seems he will not relent."

"So it seems," Anora replies, and feels the first pangs of worry lance her heart.

\----

It is on her way to her chambers one early morning to check on Duncan -- that Alistair got his way with naming their son still makes her seethe -- and his nursemaid, when she hears the faint sound of voices coming from one of the guest rooms just off the main hallway.

Anora is not proud of what she does next, but it comes to her naturally nonetheless. She'd always spied on her father and his guests as a girl and had gotten quite good at it until her father had caught her one day. She hadn't been able to sit for weeks afterwards and had needed more than the usual amount of help in bathing and getting dressed. The memory of that guilt still burns brightly even now as a grown woman.

But she cannot help it, and so she checks to see if anyone -- perhaps a servant or guard -- might see her. The hallway is empty however, and Anora tiptoes to the large wooden door and presses an ear against it.

"- know I cannot," comes a familiar voice. Lady Cousland, Anora realizes and wonders when the Warden had arrived. Usually there was a great fanfare whenever Alistair announced a visit from one of his former companions.

"I don't care," a second voice adds, and it is Alistair. Anora knows it as surely as she knows that she has ten fingers and ten toes. "I... I've missed you. Both of you. Oh, don't make that face! I did, even him!"

"Even whom, my dear Alistair? I would like to think you are speaking of me, but then again, you ARE a royal bastard and perhaps I would only be setting myself up for imminent heartache," replies a third person, and this time, Anora has to search hard for a face to match. Ah, the elven assassin. Zevran, she thinks his name is.

"Look, I... Things between Anora and I... Well, they -- they aren't going very well. You know I only did this for you in the first place. Don't make me beg. Please?"

The room has started to spin and Anora catches herself just in time to avoid fainting. The world has gone a washed-out, grainy grey and she claps a desperate hand to her mouth to stifle any sound she might make. From inside the room she hears Zevran speak again, but the words are foreign and far-off. And so she shoves herself away from the door, eager to get away from the treachery on the other side of it.

She stumbles clumsily along the hallway, grabbing onto whatever will support her weight as her mind reels. _Not again_ , she thinks. _Dear Maker, not this again._ First Cailan and now Alistair, both of them like father like son. She manages to make it into the hallway leading to her chambers before the grey washes over her in a tidal wave and she collapses on the red velvet runner.

\----

When she wakes, it is to a ring of concerned faces. Her father, her mother, Cailan. Anora blinks rapidly and the illusion disappears and instead she sees Eamon and Teagann and Alistair. She feels bile rise in her throat and motions weakly at them to leave her be. But they do not understand and instead they crowd more closely around her.

"Anora, love? Are you all right?" Alistair asks, taking her hand. She wants to scream at him that no, she isn't and that it is all his fault, that she wishes she could curse the entire Theirin line to the Black City and back. But her throat is dry and her lips too cracked and all she manages is a harsh, unlovely squawk.

"Your Majesty, she must rest," an irritable voice that she recognizes as belonging to the Palace healer pipes up. "She is still very, very ill. Shock, mostly likely!"

Alistair gives her a sceptical, worried glance and asks, "Are you certain she'll be fine?" Anora feels like laughing. Ever does the dull knife twist the deepest, someone had once told her. And now she knows the meaning of it, comprehends it fully.

"She will indeed, if left in peace," the healer responds impatiently. Alistair leans forward then and kisses her on the cheek, and Anora wishes she had the energy to raise her hands and scratch his treacherous eyes out.

"I'll be back to check up on you soon, love," he says and leaves with Eamon and Teagann in tow. And when the soft snick of the door closing reaches her ears, Anora rolls onto her side, curls herself up and waits for the tears to come. But they don't and that is somehow worst of all.


End file.
